Presidential Primaries... 2024

Friday, Washington Post reporter Bob Costa noted that Bernie, now ascendant, is turning his focus on Status Quo Joe, who still leads him nationally, though not in the early state polls. “Sanders,” he wrote, “said that Biden brings ‘a lot of baggage’ with his record and ties to the political establishment. And he argued that Biden is ill-suited to defeat President Trump. A possible long and bruising race against Biden has become central to Sanders’s planning, in part because his advisers see a fight for many of the same working-class voters.”

The 4th quarter numbers are mostly in now. Bernie led the pack— with over $34.5 million ($96 million for the year from more than 5 million contributions, an average was $18. Per donation. It was the strongest quarter of any Democrat running for the 2020 nomination. Despite all those billionaires funding them Mayo Pete brought in $24.7 for the final quarter and Status Quo Joe brought in $22.7 million. Elizabeth brought in $21.2, not terrible, but a dip from the third quarter. And Amy Klobuchar managed to find people foolish enough to waste $11.4 on her moribund campaign.

In a statement, Faiz Shakir, Bernie’s campaign manager, said “He is proving each and every day that working-class Americans are ready and willing to fully fund a campaign that stands up for them and takes on the biggest corporations and the wealthy. You build a grassroots movement to beat Donald Trump and create a political revolution one $18 donation at a time, and that’s exactly why Bernie is going to win.”

Meanwhile, the two billionaires were self-funding massive campaigns. Bloomberg has given himself something in the neighborhood of $250,000, but hasn’t reported the exact numbers yet. Steyer’s 4th quarter numbers aren’t in yet either but he had written his campaign $47,597,697 worth of checks as of September 30 and collected another $2,047,432 from contributors.

Politico published a piece by Bill Scher on Friday about the 2024 race, which would only be relevant for Democrats if Trump wins in 2020. “Will the 2020 Democratic primary establish a new consensus inside the party,” he asked, “or leave it trapped in its old arguments? Will the post-Trump Republican Party be desperate for a housecleaning, or will it crave another Trumpist candidate? We do know that prospective candidates are already thinking that far ahead, trying to carve out distinct profiles for themselves. They haven’t decided when they’re going to run, but they’re wondering if 2024 will be the right year.”

Most of Scher’s lineup is really hideous and it’s lucky they’re not based on anything but his own farts caught in a plastic bag and inhaled. Some are obvious and some are absurd but it’s beyond belief that Politico paid him to write the essay and then put it on the cover of their magazine. First the Republicans:

• Pence: “willing to sacrifice principle for ambition… [with] talent for bootlicking.”
• Nikki Haley: starting rumors about Trump replacing Pence with herself got her a ton of press and the dull-witted media loves her for her carefully calibrated political profile as “a Republican who is loyal to Trump without always agreeing with Trump… Perhaps at some point, her attempts to please Republicans from all camps won’t withstand tough questioning. But for now, she ends 2019 indisputably on the 2024 short list.
• Josh Hawley: “may be the Republican Barack Obama.” More likely: not. His sole achievement is that he’s the youngest senator, although he’s “wowed conservative commentators with a series of speeches and bills that seek to evolve Trump’s crude conservative populism into a governing vision with a sustainable intellectual foundation.” Or how about closet case and warmonger Tom Cotton instead?
• Ron DeSantis: we’ve just wandered off into the realm of idiotic. Supposedly his best trait is that he isn’t as bad as other Republican governors.
• Don Jr: I’m not making this up. “While his sister Ivanka has earned a reputation as an ineffectual inside player who is ideologically out of step with her father and the Republican Party, Junior has been a caustic, partisan warrior on social media, and a rock star on the campaign trail for his father and congressional candidates.”
• Don Sr: “If the incumbent loses this year, he would remain constitutionally eligible to run in 2024. And the elder Trump is not one to slink quietly away after a defeat.”

The Democratic line-up in Scher’s brain is also the result of his plastic bag full of farts. Or maybe he was on psychotropic drugs.

• AOC: “Whether the big-d Democratic Party will want to embrace small-d democratic socialism depends on developments that cannot be foreseen, especially this one: Which ideological faction will the 2020 Democratic nominee represent, and how will that person fare in the general election against Trump? But no matter what happens in 2020, Ocasio-Cortez has made it clear that the democratic socialists are not going anywhere, and that she is prepared to lead them. If she is ready to run in 2024, there will be a movement behind her.”
• Cuomo and Newsom: two hated neocons or, as Scher admiringly put it, “Despite their achievements, neither is receiving universal love from progressive activists… [a]ngering the activist left isn’t necessarily disqualifying to many Democratic voters.”
• Andy Beshear: very conservative though not as conservative as John Bel Edwards.
• Stacey Abrams: isn’t she supposed to be governor of Georgia by then?

How about Bernie is president ’til 2028 and then Vice President Warren takes over for 8 more years? That 16 year progressive stink is what the country needs now… not a Trump dynasty or a parade of neocons. Then it will be Senator AOC's turn. And one question: Julian Castro, Amy Klobuchar, Beto, Mayo Pete, Tulsi... none of them are going to run again?

Given A Choice, Nikki Haley Chose To Undermine The Country For Trump

Nikki Haley is a politician-- a former governor of South Carolina-- who would like to be president. She has a new book, With All Due Respect, coming out tomorrow, and her publishing company-- with her consent-- promoted it yesterday by leaking the most sizzling hot pages to the Washington Post. Anne Gearan wrote it up yesterday. Haley seems charming or, in her own words, "bad ass," in the CBS Sunday Morning interview (above). But it would behoove you to remember, she's, first and foremost, a conservative Republican-- a Trump apologist-- whose policies are not any different from the Trump Regime's-- crippling to working families. Fortunately, Norah O'Donnell's personality puff piece also went into the Tillerson-Kelly exposé.

Gearan's piece is far more savaged effective than O'Donnell's. She wrote that according to Haley, Tillerson and Kelly "undermined and ignored" Trump "in what they claimed was an effort to 'save the country.'" I guess we know exactly what Anonymous was referring to in his original NY Times editorial. "Former secretary of state Rex Tillerson and former White House chief of staff John F. Kelly sought to recruit her to work around and subvert Trump, but she refused, Haley writes in a new book, With All Due Respect, which also describes Tillerson as 'exhausting' and imperious and Kelly as suspicious of her access to Trump." Instead, she chose to stick with Trump and help him undermine the country.

“Kelly and Tillerson confided in me that when they resisted the president, they weren’t being insubordinate, they were trying to save the country,” Haley wrote.

“It was their decisions, not the president’s, that were in the best interests of America, they said. The president didn’t know what he was doing,” Haley wrote of the views the two men held.

Tillerson also told her that people would die if Trump was unchecked, Haley wrote.

Tillerson did not respond to a request for comment. Kelly declined to comment in detail, but said that if providing the president “with the best and most open, legal and ethical staffing advice from across the [government] so he could make an informed decision is ‘working against Trump,’ then guilty as charged.”

In the book, which was obtained by the Washington Post ahead of its release Tuesday, Haley offers only glancing critiques of her former boss, saying she and others who worked for Trump had an obligation to carry out his wishes since he was the one elected by voters.

The former South Carolina governor, widely viewed by Republicans as a top potential presidential candidate, has repeatedly sought to minimize differences with Trump while distancing herself from his excesses. Haley, 47, writes that she backed most of the foreign policy decisions by Trump that others tried to block or slow down, including withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate accord and the relocation of the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

In a New York City interview with The Post coinciding with the book release, Haley also dismissed efforts by House Democrats to impeach Trump. She said she opposes Trump’s efforts to seek foreign help for political investigations in a call with Ukraine’s president, but that the actions are not impeachable.

“There was no heavy demand insisting that something had to happen. So it’s hard for me to understand where the whole impeachment situation is coming from, because what everybody’s up in arms about didn’t happen,” Haley said.

“So, do I think it’s not good practice to talk to foreign governments about investigating Americans? Yes. Do I think the president did something that warrants impeachment? No, because the aid flowed,” she said, referring to nearly $400 million in sidelined military aid.

“And, in turn, the Ukrainians didn’t follow up with the investigation,” Haley said.

In her book, Haley points to several examples of disagreements with Trump. She said she went privately to the president with her concern that he had ceded authority to Russian President Vladi­mir Putin after the two leaders met in Helsinki in 2017 and with her objection to what she called Trump’s “moral equivalence” in response to a deadly white supremacist march in Charlottesville later that summer.

Haley’s experience as governor during the 2015 murders of nine black churchgoers inside a historic African American church in Charleston by an avowed white supremacist made Trump’s reaction to Charlottesville painful, Haley wrote. Trump said “both sides” had been to blame for the violence.

“A leader’s words matter in these situations. And the president’s words had been hurtful and dangerous,” Haley wrote. “I picked up the phone and called the president.”

Haley did not air any objections publicly, however.

Haley also recounts for the first time that she was treated for post-traumatic stress disorder following the Charleston murders. She described bouts of sobbing, loss of appetite and focus, and guilt for feeling that way when the victims and their families had suffered so much more.

In a CBS interview that aired Sunday, Haley said Trump was “not appropriate” to demand that four minority Democratic members of Congress “go back” to their countries. Three of the women were born in the United States and all are U.S. citizens.

But Haley also defended Trump, saying “I can also appreciate where he’s coming from, from the standpoint of, ‘Don’t bash America, over and over and over again, and not do something to try and fix it.’”

...In writing about the administration, Haley recalls a disagreement she had with Tillerson and Kelly following an Oval Office showdown over her suggestion that the United States should withhold funding for the U.N. agency that supports Palestinians.

Kelly and Tillerson argued that cutting aid could lead to violence, greater threats to Israel, loss of U.S. influence and political problems for Arab allies, she writes. That view is common among Middle East watchers and Trump critics, who say the administration's approach is punitive and shortsighted.

Haley said she had the backing of Trump’s Middle East peace envoys, including son-in-law Jared Kushner, but he was not in the room. She did not spell out the views of then-national security adviser H.R. McMaster.

In the meeting, Haley wrote, Trump seemed to be swinging away from her view, but told the three of them to go resolve their differences elsewhere. In Kelly’s office afterward, Kelly told her, “ ‘I have four secretaries of state: you, H.R., Jared, and Rex,” she wrote. “’I only need one.’”

Tillerson and others had an obligation to carry out the president’s agenda because he had been elected, not them, Haley wrote. If they disagreed strongly enough, she said they should quit.

“I was so shocked I didn’t say anything going home because I just couldn’t get my arms around the fact that here you have two key people in an administration undermining the president,” Haley said in The Post interview.

On another occasion, Haley said Kelly stalled and put her off when she wanted to get in to see Trump. When she went around him, he complained. Kelly also made it clear that he thought Trump’s decision to make Haley a full member of the Cabinet, and have her attend National Security Council meetings, had been “terrible,” and that he would ensure the next U.N. ambassador did not carry that rank, she wrote.

Trump gave Haley a warm send-off last fall, while Kelly’s departure was announced in chillier terms weeks later. Haley’s successor, Kelly Craft, who assumed the U.N. job in September, does not carry the same rank Haley did. Tillerson, meanwhile, was fired by Trump via Twitter in March 2018.

“I have found in politics that when you are a woman in politics you encounter two types of people,” Haley said in the interview, conducted at her publisher’s offices in Lower Manhattan.

“You encounter people who respect you for your skill and your knowledge and the work that you’re trying to do, and support you in that process. Or you encounter people who disregard you and see you as in the way. That would happen at times,” Haley said.

Asked whether she was calling Kelly sexist, Haley said she had no personal quarrel with the retired four-star Marine general, whom she called a patriot.

“It’s a way of saying that sometimes he was not as conscious of the job I was trying to do,” Haley said.

Trump liked her direct approach and was respectful when they disagreed, Haley said.

She wrote that each had taken the other’s measure during the Republican primary, when she first backed Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and publicly called on Trump to release his tax returns. Trump tweeted that “the people of South Carolina are embarrassed by Nikki Haley!”

“Trump had been kicked, and he was hollering. But what he didn’t know then was, when I get kicked, I holler too,” Haley wrote.

She fired back with what she describes as “Southern-woman code.”

“Bless your heart,” she tweeted.

The book’s title is a reference to Haley’s comment last year publicly refuting an assertion by White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow that she had suffered “momentary confusion” about forthcoming U.S. sanctions on Russia.

In a detailed blow-by-blow account, Haley wrote that she had gone on television at the request of the White House to address the U.S. response to a deadly April 2018 Syrian chemical weapons attack and the U.S. view that Russia was complicit. When asked about punitive sanctions, Haley said she answered with the latest information she had, which was that Trump had approved new sanctions that would be announced shortly.

But Trump had changed his mind and no one told her, Haley wrote, and then White House staffers hung her out to dry. The Post reported at the time that Trump changed his mind after Haley spoke.

Haley said when a promised White House statement holding her blameless failed to materialize later that day or the next, she gave Kelly a deadline of the close of the following day-- a Tuesday-- before she went public. Kudlow’s remark to reporters on that Tuesday afternoon was evidence that Kelly did not intend to “fix this,” she wrote.

Bucking some members of her staff who urged her to let it slide, Haley told a reporter: “With all due respect, I don’t get confused.”

Kudlow called within 15 minutes to apologize, and then went public with a mea culpa.

“Women are cautious about politics, for good reason,” she wrote. “It’s not a pretty business. It’s often hateful. It would be wonderful if we could change our politics in America to make it less nasty and less personal. But until that happens, especially if you’re a woman, you have to stand up for yourself. Always.”

The book leaves the door open to a potential return to politics, but is silent about any White House ambitions. In the interview, Haley waved off the question. She will evaluate her next steps year by year, she said.

“I’m not even thinking that way. I’m thinking more of, we need to do all we can to get the president reelected. And then from there, deciding how I will use the power of my voice,” Haley said.

“I know I’m too young to stop fighting, I know that. And I know that I need and want to be involved in some way that’s helpful.”

Haley is hardly the only slimy Republican residing in a cesspool of shit and treason against our country. Former Republican Congressman David Jolly of Miami-Dade was on MSNBC explaining just exactly who his old congressional colleagues are... you know... as people, as human beings: "These are, in today's Republican Party, spineless politicians rotten to the core without virtue. Without any level of human integrity, devoid of self-respect, self-reflection, without courage and without the moral compass to recognize their own malevolence." But at least Haley got something for her defense of the indefensible-- a swell tweet for her book yesterday evening: